After the amazing Ted Cruz triumph over Texas Lt. Governor David Dewhurst for the Republican nomination for U.S. Senate, a couple political Twitterati including Rick Wilson and David Weigel mused that success has 1000 fathers . The implication, of course, that everyone wants to share in the success and no one wants to admit they were part of a losing effort.

That’s true, of course. As I tweeted: Winning > Losing. And it’s fun to be on the winning side.

In thinking about Ted Cruz’ win, though, his success really did have a thousand fathers. More, actually.

I could probably list 100 people, easily, who put it on the line, and early, for Ted Cruz. I’ll admit I came on board after Jim DeMint because of my love for both Michael Williams and Ted Cruz. Both are great conservatives. It was a matter of who could win. It didn’t take long for Ted to demonstrate that he was the guy.

Jim DeMint lead the way. Mike Lee pushed everyone far and wide for Ted. But that really wasn’t the beginning.

Ted Cruz spoke at Texas Americans for Prosperity events and was introduced to grassroots there. After that, Ted did the hard work of attending CPACs, multiple Tea Parties, and all sorts of conservative gatherings.

Every Texas Tea Party leader and many tea partiers themselves knew Ted personally. He and his campaign manager John Drogin gutted it up day in and day out doing the hard politicking that it takes to win when you don’t have millions to burn.

Club for Growth, Freedom Works, and Sarah Palin [her analysis here], to name a few, came in and fortified and energized Cruz supporters, pushing Cruz enough to rob Dewhurst of the primary victory and forcing a run-off.

And here is why Citizen United is so very, very important: Without SuperPACs, incumbents are nearly untouchable.

How many important donors could give to these PACs and not risk the wrath of the very powerful powers-that-be? Many. Otherwise, they’d have to curry favor with someone like the Lt. Governor or sit on the sidelines for fear of losing and being punished for disloyalty.

PACS give donors both big and small the ability to fight for politicians who represent them without fear of reprisal should their fight be lost.

So, Ted Cruz success had thousands of fathers, but mostly Ted Cruz succeeded because he is a great candidate, the right man for the time, and worked his tail off doing the old fashioned work of politics — earning one vote at at time.

Ted Cruz looks good going into the run-off election with Texas Lt. Governor David Dewhurst to be the Republican nominee for the United States Senate. How did this happen?

Well, Ted is a great candidate first of all: smart, principled, and hard working. He has been working the grassroots circuit for years. I first met Ted maybe three or four years ago when he was speaking at an Americans for Prosperity event in Austin. Since then, he’s faithfully attended Teaparty after Teaparty event. Ted knows every significant grassroots activist in Texas personally.

Ted’s hard work gave him name recognition among the around 30% of the most faithful, devoted conservative leaning political faithful in Texas. They came through and voted for him in the primary but Dewhurst still beat him with his higher name recognition and money, but I knew pretty assuredly that if Ted got into the run-off, Team Dewhurst was in big trouble.

Why? A couple reasons:

1. Most Republican voters have already voted and won’t come back out to vote.
2. The most dedicated will vote.
3. In a head-to-head, Cruz’s name recognition will increase.

The Dewhurst camp made a bad decision when they went so negative on Ted Cruz: The criticism was so outrageously over-the-top that people were forced to go look up the truth. When they went to investigate, many liked what they saw. I’m not sure if the negative ads didn’t help Ted Cruz.

Thursday night of last week, FreePAC, Freedom Works political action committee taught a stadium full of people how to get out the vote. [My interview with Matt Kibbe here.]

After that, there were rousing speeches from all sorts of Cruz supporters. Following the speechifying, Senators Jim DeMint, Mike Lee, and Rand Paul, Republican usurper Richard Mourdock of Indiana (who beat incumbent Senator Lugar), and FreedomWorks president Matt Kibbe gave a press conference. There were a couple reporters there and then about 20 bloggers.

[Aside: Journalists ask stupid questions. I got to roll my eyes in front of them instead of online. Example: “Do Republicans want to win the Presidency more or the Congress more?”]

The FreePAC event lasted late and so early Friday, I drove back to The Woodlands, Texas and then went to the TeaParty event where many state TeaParty leaders showed up and endorsed Ted Cruz. Also there: Senator Jim DeMint and former Alaska Governor Ted Cruz.

Combined, these events and others like them around the state have the troops riled for a big turnout tomorrow. The energy certainly seems in Ted Cruz’ favor.

These folks were asked by a Texas Teaparty leader to turn toward the camera folks and show them they’re not DC insiders.

John Drogin, Ted Cruz for Texas campaign manager

John Drogin, Ted Cruz’ campaign manager working hard at the Teaparty event in The Woodlands, Texas.

A Republican Party that has been unwilling to cut spending has now let go through Congress legislation to shut down lawful, legal businesses because cigarette industry lobbyists and a Senate Democrat wanted it done.

We’re not ready for a third party and both this site and me will continue advocating for conservative Republicans, but if the GOP doesn’t finally get a clue, I won’t be surprised to see it implode. By the way, this year fewer and fewer Republican candidates are signing the tax pledge on the advice of Republican members of Congress. This is another warning sign that the Eric Cantor led Republican conference is going far afield from what those who vote Republican actually want.

The GOP better get back to its pro-liberty roots quickly.

Let me put a finer point on this: If the Republican party cannot find its spine should Mitt Romney get elected; if the Republican part has the power to enact the party planks and refuses to do so, this will be the last time people vote Republican.

I repeat: THIS IS THE LAST TIME.

Why? Because a Republican party that sends the Republic over the edge just more slowly is unacceptable.

There are many people who have had it. Count me among them.

The Republicans may scorn this. They may think this is more caterwauling from the cry baby peasants.

No. This is just the way it is now.

American cannot afford the practices Erick alluded to and Americans who care about the country aren’t going to help support evil in their own name.

As it currently stands, voting for either political party means that taxpayers and their children are voting against their own interests. Between taxes, regulation, government overreach, and a generally surly attitude pointed at the common citizen, Americans are sick of being treated like servants to the government.

Enough.

So, this is their last chance. I’ve been saying this for three years now. The Republicans are still not listening. They’re unprincipled, weak, and unclear in their communications because they have no convictions.

They have one last chance at redemption. And should they fail, they will be removed from power because the Republican party will be gutted. And America will suffer for a couple decades (probably), but Americans won’t care.

You know why? Because they’re already suffering.

Beware those with nothing to lose but shackles. Beware those who still believe in liberty.

This combination is called a patriot. And the patriots are restless.

UPDATED ALREADY:

A Twitter bud says this:

@MelissaTweets Sorry you left out the fact that neither party wants to cut spending and which is why the one in power blames the other.

Chief Justice Roberts, in writing the final Obamacare opinion, made an argument for Obamacare that Obama and his minions refused to: It’s a tax. So, Justice Roberts found that Obamacare wasn’t okay under the Commerce clause but it was a-ok under the constitution’s provision allowing Congress to levy taxes.

By voting with the liberals to uphold the Affordable Care Act, Roberts has put himself above partisan reproach. No one can accuse Roberts of ruling as a movement conservative. He’s made himself bulletproof against insinuations that he’s animated by party allegiances.

But by voting with the conservatives on every major legal question before the court, he nevertheless furthered the major conservative projects before the court — namely, imposing limits on federal power. And by securing his own reputation for impartiality, he made his own advocacy in those areas much more effective. If, in the future, Roberts leads the court in cases that more radically constrain the federal government’s power to regulate interstate commerce, today’s decision will help insulate him from criticism. And he did it while rendering a decision that Democrats are applauding.

I am not persuaded by this thinking, more on why in a minute.

Erick Erickson had a more reasoned response to the ruling (and I have noted that many conservative lawyers are walking this line, but as I’ve said before, and will repeat here, lawyers don’t think like normal people. They think in the constraints of the law and not in the constraints of morality — what is right and wrong — and this skewed perspective can be technocratic and miss the overarching point. I’m not sure that my conservative lawyer friends are quite missing the point, but I feel murky about this parsing). You can read Erick’s nuanced view here.

One point Erick makes is that Roberts is trying to keep the Supreme Court above the partisan fray. That is all noble but is the opinion constitutional?

Sorry if this question makes me literal, but that’s all I care about. The constitution being upheld is of paramount importance. By attempting to be “non-partisan”, Roberts is conceding that he was influenced by President Obama and the left’s fit-throwing. The toddlers won and so the finding becomes a partisan affair.

Today, Ben Domenech came on the Malcolm & Melissa podcast with Andrew and Me and he noted that if Roberts was politically influenced (and it seems he was), that the Right is going to have to reconsider its longstanding aversion to trying to bully courts into decisions the way the Left has traditionally done. He sees that outcome as profoundly troubling. [Aside: It was a great podcast and I’ll link it as soon as it’s produced.]

The Obamacare ruling makes the hated legislation an election and taxation issue. Some say that Roberts delivered the White House to Romney.

Highly unlikely.

Consider this: Only 47% of American workers even pay Federal Income Tax. The non-tax payers have little vested interest in caring about this tax hike. It won’t affect them. As Avik Roy of Forbes pointed out, 67% of Americans already have subsidized health care. The abused American tax payer is already in the minority. The Democrats were playing the odds with this legislation and they know it. They gambled and time after time, they’ve won.

In addition, the Evil Genius argument not only counts on the American people and Congress to overturn Obamacare, it assumes that Congress will be bound by a tightened Commerce Clause interpretation.

When has a Democrat majority felt constrained by, well, anything? Look at how they were willing to ram Obamacare down America’s throat. There is no constraining statists. The Commerce Clause won’t do it, either. In addition, Roberts gives Congress essentially unchecked taxing ability.

Will a Republican Senate and White House overturn Obamacare now known as Obamatax?

If, if, IF.

From the beginning, I’ve felt that if Obamacare passed, repealing it would be nigh to impossible. No, this Supreme Court decision didn’t surprise me.

And in this way, Justice Roberts is right: Voters should be careful about who they elect. Voters shouldn’t be so cavalier about voting for big government Dems.

Tonight, I had the very special opportunity to talk to former Texas Solicitor General Ted Cruz. Ted is running for U.S. Senate but first he must win a very expensive and very challenging primary against an opponent who is spending a million dollars a week to beat him. He’s still confident.

Ted received another big endorsement — this time from Governor Sarah Palin. He’s also been endorsed by Rand Paul, (and just now, RON Paul!!), Mike Lee, and a bunch of other people.

Imagine being afraid you’ll lose your job because you believe the people to blame for 9/11 are the Islamofascists who plotted it. That’s what one Hollywood writer, Daniel Knauf endured. Here’s what he said:

Toadies in the MSM assert that there is no Blacklist in Hollywood.

And they’re right.

It’s not necessary because Hollywood is a very, very small, very, very ruthless town, where a few key words spoken in the right ears can absolutely wreck a career–code-words like “difficult,” “high-maintenance” and “uneven.” When you can obliterate a fellow professional with a few well-chosen phrases, why maintain something as crude and inelegant as a Blacklist?

How dare anyone even suggest that there’s a Blacklist against conservative artists and performers?

Blacklists are for mouth-breathers.

Blacklists are for knuckle-draggers.

Blacklists are so… so… Republican.

And so I kept my mouth shut. And a funny thing happened: The longer I was forced to withhold my opinions and beliefs, the brighter they burned in me. Funny. Oppression has a way of doing that to the oppressed.

Ask any Soviet defector…

For years, I bit my tongue, nodding and making non-committal sounds while listening to the most virulently noxious Leftist spew imaginable: Explicit rape-murder fantasies directed toward Palin, Coulter, Malkin and Ingraham; blithely expressed wishes of cancer, assassination and mutilation of Bush, Cheney and Limbaugh; the snide denigration of “civilians” (i.e. anyone not in the entertainment business) in the “flyover states” (i.e. everywhere except New York and east of the Golden State Freeway–Pasadena, for instance is a “flyover state”); and, of course, the endless venomous, profanity-laced screes against the Tea Party.

Even more shocking was the rampant hypocrisy, the endemic corruption, the casual thievery–from producers ordering custom built doors and windows for their homes from the construction department, to having their Beemers and Benzos topped daily with gas by Transpo. All on the studio dime.

Meanwhile, any actress or female writer can tell you that the Casting Couch is alive and well in contemporary Hollywood. And it’s absolutely fascinating just how many male producers and execs time their set-visits to coincide with nude-scenes…

Are we downloading the Children’s app [full disclosure: I am helping promote the app — business sent to me via Andrew Breitbart, by the way]: CherryTree? It’s for children. It’s safe. It’s free. And it’s being developed by Hollywood conservatives Dan Kessler and Allen Covert. These men, by the way, are wonderful. I had the joy and honor of walking around CPAC as these two Hollywood men, locked in liberal land, received hugs from adoring conservative fans.

If Andrew showed us anything, he demonstrated an absolute faith in the conservative movement–from conservative moms doing Tea Parties fearing for friendships to Hollywood actors fearing for livelihoods.

We need to do better helping each other, building each other’s businesses, hiring each other, buying each other’s products and promoting the work of dedicated conservatives–some risking everything.

Andrew Breitbart lit up a room. Out at Western CPAC in Southern California a couple years ago, his star was rising, and he gave an interview. I asked him what he was doing; as in, how do you see your role?

He told us that he saw himself as a “merry mischief maker”. He wanted to turn the media upside down. He wanted to destroy them.

Andrew succeeded. He created the most surreal media moment ever: He ended up speaking at Anthony Weiner’s late and ill-fated press conference. He was at once the press and the news. It was a seminal moment. It was the moment I felt that Andrew had achieved his ends.

Everything had changed. The New Media was rising.

The grief-making part of it? He’d just really started. So much work to do. So much vitality.

In the spring of last year, Andrew called me and asked if I’d help him promote his book Righteous Indignation. He overnighted a review copy. In a day, I read it cover to cover.

If you haven’t read Andrew’s book, you really must. Not only is he a great story teller and beautiful writer, and he is, he also gives great hope through his own story. His biography shows a man, who like most Americans, didn’t pay attention and how he “woke up”.

And boy, did he wake up. He was the righteous, pointed finger in the chest of the empty and sanctimonious left. He had their number and they knew it.

As I sit here crying, I fear looking at Twitter for seeing all the nastiness and venom that will spill forth about Andrew from the left. He was hated because he was effective. They hated his persona. They hated his gumption. They hated him. [Updated: Do they ever.]

Knowing Andrew–knowing his sweet nature, knowing his kindness, knowing his generosity–I would just marvel at the contrast between what the left caricatured him as being with who he really was.

You know that carousing guy? That guy who skates on the edge or goes over it? The guy who cheats on his wife while out of town or likes to give the impression of being a player?

That wasn’t Andrew. Ever.

Andrew was devoted. He was a true family man. He chortled about people implying that he was gay as his domestic life with his wife and four kids was so tranquil and happy. He liked that someone viewed him as edgy.

At one small gathering, I found Andrew walking aimlessly around the hotel lobby with his iPad. I asked him what he was doing. Well, he couldn’t find anyone and was waiting for people to show up–for three hours. When it was suggested that he could have called one of us, he responded, “I’m not very good without my wife or Larry.”

Scattered, brimming with ideas, mulish, and hell-bent, Andrew could be a handful. His best friend Larry Solov is as sweet, calm, and circumspect as Andrew is bombastic, frenetic and bold. Larry helped Andrew succeed in so many ways. When it came to the business of Andrew Breitbart, Andrew and Larry were two parts of a whole.

Andrew was so full of life, it is almost impossible to fathom the emptiness that will be felt by those close to him. I feel it and I didn’t interact with Andrew every day.

I worried for Andrew. Before CPAC this year, there had been threats made on his life. Andrew was symbolic for the left and his death would be a triumph. And yet Andrew didn’t seem concerned at all. He just plowed on and engaged.

He gave his phone number to anyone. He would talk to anyone. He was not a respecter of persons.

I wish he was still here. There’s too much work to do. Who will do it? Who will do it like Andrew?

I’ve never known someone, perhaps with the exception of Drudge himself, who had more of a savant’s sense of media, old and new — but especially new. In the early days of the Drudge Report there was a lot of talk about how Drudge made the news, and that was often true. But he could only do that by understanding the news and how it worked at a visceral instinctive level. Matt saw this same gift in Andrew, which is why he hired him. The two of them changed the course of the massive river of news for literally billions of people. That’s no exaggeration, even venerable enterprises and institutions that despised the Drudge Report and pretended it didn’t exist had to change course because of it.I’ve never known someone, perhaps with the exception of Drudge himself, who had more of a savant’s sense of media, old and new — but especially new. In the early days of the Drudge Report there was a lot of talk about how Drudge made the news, and that was often true. But he could only do that by understanding the news and how it worked at a visceral instinctive level. Matt saw this same gift in Andrew, which is why he hired him. The two of them changed the course of the massive river of news for literally billions of people. That’s no exaggeration, even venerable enterprises and institutions that despised the Drudge Report and pretended it didn’t exist had to change course because of it.

Matt Drudge says this:

“DEAR READER: In the first decade of the DRUDGEREPORT Andrew Breitbart was a constant source of energy, passion and commitment. We shared a love of headlines, a love of the news, an excitement about what’s happening. I don’t think there was a single day during that time when we did not flash each other or laugh with each other, or challenge each other. I still see him in my mind’s eye in Venice Beach, the sunny day I met him. He was in his mid 20’s. It was all there. He had a wonderful, loving family and we all feel great sadness for them today… MDRUDGE”

Rick Santorum pointed out that RomneyCare was the basis for ObamaCare. This is simply fact. Romney’s response?

And let me — let me — let me mention one more — the reason we have Obama Care — the reason we have Obama Care is because the Senator you supported over Pat Toomey in Pennsylvania, Arlen Specter, the pro- choice Senator of Pennsylvania that you supported and endorsed in a race over Pat Toomey, he voted for Obama Care. If you had not supported him, if we had said, no to Arlen Specter, we would not have Obama Care. So don’t look at me. Take a look in the mirror.

Wait, what? How about we blame Specter’s parents. I mean, if they hadn’t had him, he wouldn’t have grown up to be a lousy Senator.

Heh. I suggest we blame Satan. Without Satan, Arlen Specter wouldn’t have had evil impulses.

Republican money, leadership, important people, how come you can’t see the obvious weakness?

And the fact that ANY candidate looks weak in the face of Obama just demonstrates how idiotic it is to play along with the media and these stupid debates.